It was bought for £20,000 by a consortium including several of the original investors, the Duke of Devonshire and with the LNWR railway company as a major shareholder.

[2][3][4] The three-storey Palace Hotel is built of millstone grit stone and was designed in the style of a French château (with a Mansard roof with iron ridge railings and a central tower) by Henry Currey.

Currey was the Duke of Devonshire's architect and he also designed Buxton's St Ann's Well of 1852, Thermal Baths, Natural Baths, Pump Room, Market Hall, Holy Trinity Church, Congregational Church, Devonshire Park Chapel, Christchurch at Burbage, Wye House Asylum and Corbar Hall.

Fellow architect Robert Rippon Duke was the Clerk of Works for the hotel's construction and he designed the grand marble-decorated extensions to the building in 1887, including a large new dining room at the rear and a new west wing.

[6] George Bernard Shaw, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Margaret Thatcher are some of the famous guests who stayed at the hotel.